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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28861431">Moonlight Vigil</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeiskyte/pseuds/Zeiskyte'>Zeiskyte</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Persona 4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Grief/Mourning, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, Post canon angst time, Slight Suicide Ideation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 05:34:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,097</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28861431</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zeiskyte/pseuds/Zeiskyte</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the absence of everything, Sho learns to cope with his greatest loss.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Minazuki Sho &amp; Minazuki Sho</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Moonlight Vigil</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I needed to get this out of my system. Sort of a companion piece to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25594489">Eclipse</a> where Minazuki <i>doesn't</i> miraculously come back after the true end of P4U2.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He stares at the man across from him, watches as he narrows his eyes tentatively as if wary of what he sees. His eyebrows lower from beneath his messy red bangs; he knows this due to the matching downward slope of his own. The man’s mouth twitches into a frown - faltering for a moment too long - and then it is downturned in an awkward, forced way. <em>Everything</em> is forced, obviously. The man before him is nothing but a mimicry, an echo, an inferior replica - a caricature of someone who once was.</p>
<p>In the silence, the sharp blue eyes seem to ask, <em>Just how pathetic are you?</em></p>
<p>They both - the man - he - <em>Sho</em> closes his eyes, leans forward, and presses his forehead to the mirror.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>“Hey, d’you see that?” he asks the empty air, wiping blood from his lips with the back of his hand. He stares down at the corpse in front of him, slowly sinking into the grass as life leaves its body. He tightens his fingers around the hilts of his blades in his impatience - <em>he</em> always told him that he was awfully impatient - and scoffs. “Right. Of course you didn’t. You’re dead.”</p>
<p>He kicks the corpse for good measure, but the sinking feeling in his chest does not vanish. It <em>intensifies</em>, if anything - and it serves only to infuriate him. The blood in his mouth morphs into something bitter, tinged with the bile rising in his throat.</p>
<p>As he swallows it down, he distantly wonders how it might feel to be the dead body at his feet, seeping into the dirt and making a home in the crimson-dyed grass beneath him. In the same detached manner, he decides that the feeling is relatively the same; the only difference between them is the stubborn beating of his heart.</p>
<p>He stabs his katana through the corpse’s chest, skewering the stilted heart, envy clawing ruthlessly at his insides like a beast untamed. It is only the dying throes of willpower that guide his bloodied katana to its sheath and his feet towards the safehouse. The entirety of the trip back, the treacherous thumping of his heart feels like the greatest betrayal of his wishes.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>A trip across the tall buildings of Tokyo. He slips from shadow to shadow, bright red hair hidden under the hood of his oversized jacket, and he searches - not for the first time - for the silver hair of one Narukami Yu. His hands itch for a battle, fingers twitching in anticipation - and his chest <em>aches</em> at the promise of a fight. Killing strangers is hardly fun at all; what he wants is a <em>challenge</em>.</p>
<p>“The hell is he?” he growls to the empty air, to himself, to <em>no one</em>. “This <em>is</em> where he lives, right?”</p>
<p>He lands in a crouch, perching at the edge of a skyscraper and glaring down at the city of steel and lights below. He’s never seen this many people in one place; back in the lab, it was him, Ikutsuki, another researcher or two, and the robots. There must be <em>thousands</em> of people in the space beneath his shoes, living vastly different lives than the broken boy hundreds of feet above them.</p>
<p>“<em>You won’t find him</em>,” he mocks himself in a lower voice, but the pitch and the cadence are all wrong. “<em>Unlike you, he can do things besides fight</em>.”</p>
<p>He grips his knees, clenching his teeth hard and squeezing his eyes shut. “What else am I supposed to do?” he asks himself, body trembling as he teeters dangerously above the Tokyo city streets. Releasing the fabric of his pants, he moves his hands, crosses his arms across his chest, grabs at his biceps, <em>hugs himself</em> - “... It’s what Dad taught me.”</p>
<p>He has no answer.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>In the forest behind the safehouse, his feet stall at the sight of a feather, fallen to the ground and nestled in the grass. It’s white and missing the ethereal blue shine and doesn’t glint in the light and it fails to reprimand him as he crushes it under his shoe.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>Perhaps due to happenstance, he finds himself staring down Narukami a month later. The Investigation Team’s leader is slightly taller than Sho remembers him to be, but they are still unable to see eye-to-eye. It has nothing to do with height.</p>
<p>He wears a different school uniform and his katana is missing and Sho is already regretting his desire to seek the boy out when he asks, “Minazuki?”</p>
<p>There is no fight to be had here. Narukami is without a weapon - and yet, he has already hurt Sho enough to consider their meeting a victory.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>Whether it is out of desperation, or perhaps anger, or maybe even loneliness - Sho enters the TV. The fog has subsided, and there are no Shadows to be found. There is nothing to use his swords on besides himself. His katanas remain in their sheaths, dead weight crossed behind him at his hip. He’s finally found a problem he cannot solve with his swords.</p>
<p>Wordlessly, he reaches within himself, seizes the power lurking within his heart, and <em>pulls</em>.</p>
<p>Tsukiyomi manifests in the empty space before him, clothes billowing in a non-existent wind. Its sword remains at its side, dark energy rising and disappearing into the air once it leaves the blade. From behind its golden mask, it stares expectantly at him with crimson eyes.</p>
<p>Without preamble, he takes a step forward and pulls his Persona into a tight embrace, burying his face in the fabric where a heart would be. There is no reassuring <em>thumpthumpthump</em>, and the Persona fails to return the hug; it floats in front of him motionlessly and makes no move to leave his grasp.</p>
<p>“Just let me pretend for a little while,” he murmurs pathetically, clutching the fabric of Tsukiyomi’s body. While it certainly doesn’t rebut, it doesn’t speak at all either. Sho’s heart sinks further into his stomach and he shuts his eyes to keep the tears from forming. “You’re not him... but you’re the closest thing I have.”</p>
<p>In the silence, he imagines Minazuki in his arms. He imagines gentle hands on his back, and wonders what the man would say to him now - wonders if it would be a quiet reprimand to not be weak, a chiding about how vulnerable and pathetic he was, or a reassuring whisper about it being okay to cry.</p>
<p>Tsukiyomi does none of that and Sho allows the tears to fall.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”</p>
<p>- Madeline Miller, <em>The Song of Achilles</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Crown 11/20/2020<br/>ANGST TIME</p><p>P4 true end. Minazuki is gone. Sho leaves the TV and goes soul searching. Kinda just wanders around Japan aimlessly. There's no one telling him what to do/what he should be doing so... he just kind of wanders. When he gets lonely/sad, he slips into a TV, summons Tsukiyomi, and talks to his Persona as if it's Minazuki<br/>I kinda wanna write this and cry</p><p>kokomaruruun 11/20/2020<br/>PAIN<br/>BIG BRAIN BIG PAIN</p><p>(If you want something that's significantly happier than this, my 52k Shadow Operative Sho is going up in a week. I hope you also like Persona 5, because a certain detective plays a very big role in that fic as well.)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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